Originally Posted by nawchem

I read a long article on aspartame sometime ago, it seemed that politics played a large role in aspartames approval in US. Donald Rumsfeld (Iraqi Freedom) was the president of Montsanto the company that discovered aspartame was sweet and marketed it. They couldn't get approval of aspartame until Ronald Reagan took office in 1980 and appointed the FDA commisioner. Montsanto had hired outside contractors to do the initial safety studies on aspartame. The researcher was getting negative results so Montsanto started over doing the studies in house. The initial researcher went public with his results. Its illegal to pick and choose which data you present to the FDA. The FDA commisioner resigned when an investigation was launched about aspartames approval. He became a consultant for Montsanto.